Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Earlier this spring it was Roger Ebert, fulfilling a long-held dream by winning the New Yorker caption contest. (Ebert, who submitted 107 captions before winning, had written two years earlier, "I have done more writing for free for the New Yorker in the last five years than for anybody in the previous 40 years.") Now another Chicago scribe is a contender—Tribune columnist Phil Rosenthal, whose submission (a good one!) can be seen here. If this is going to become another contest between local media institutions, I hope it goes better for us than the softball league.

Related: think it's hard getting a caption in the New Yorker? Try a cartoon.

Check out strange open-air art along highways and byways in Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Artist and environmental activist Jenny Kendler makes complex work about the weird relationship between humans and the natural world. And she has just found a bigger platform as the first-ever artist in residence for the Natural Resources Defense Council.